An Impressive Walking Google Robot Tries to Vacuum the Stairs

These strange-looking, two-legged robots might be the predecessor of a machine that someday helps with chores around the home. The bipedal bot, which has yet to be named, was developed by Schaft, a Japanese robotics company that is part of X, the research lab owned by Alphabet (previously Google). It was revealed at an event in Japan hosted by Andy Rubin, who started Google's robotics project before leaving the company at the end of 2014 to create his own hardware incubator. A video shot by someone at the event shows the robot carrying a heavy-looking gym weight, slipping on a tube without falling over, and cleaning a set of stairs with a vacuum cleaner brush attachment on its feet. It can also be seen walking through a forest and along a rocky beach.